Parties trade charges at EC meet on RK Nagar bypoll

Monday 18th December 2017 07:51 EST
 
 

Chennai: Political parties made charges and counter-charges at the meeting called by Special Officer Vikram Batra to take stock of the situation prevailing in the R.K. Nagar constituency, where the voting is scheduled on December 21. They even targeted the police and poll officials for various acts of omission and commission.

At the meeting, the ruling AIADMK was represented by Deputy Speaker of Lok Sabha M Thambi Durai, Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar and P.H. Manoj Pandian. Thambi Durai rejected allegations that his partymen were involved in distributing money and claimed some persons were trying to pose as AIADMK functionaries and were distributing money. When asked about the allegation that money was distributed in AIADMK party functionary Balaganga's residence, Thambi Durai sought to brush aside the allegation and said Balaganga’s house was in Egmore and not in Dr. Radhakrishnan Nagar.

DMK, the main opposition party, called for debarring candidates who distributed money to voters. Party’s working president M K Stalin along with former Minister Durai Murugan and Organising Secretary R.S. Bharathi represented the party. Stalin alleged that Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami, Deputy Chief Minister O. Pannerselvam and T.T.V. Dhinakaran had made democracy a laughing stock, and they have already distributed £10 million to the voters. “We have submitted a petition with adequate evidence. We have asked the election officials to take action against them so that they could not contest in elections in the future,” he demanded.

BJP State President Tamilisai Soundararajan said if the prevailing situation in R K Nagar was not conducive for conducting a free and fair poll, “there would be no use” in holding the bypoll. “The bypoll has to be conducted as per the rules. Please cross-check our complaints. Even if there is 1% violation of the rules, there would absolutely be no use in holding this bypoll,” Soundarajan said.


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